Nothing Good Happens After Midnight: A Suspense Magazine Anthology
Page 15
“What the hell?” Tommy demanded. A stray cloud danced across the moon; what light they had paled—and the shadows seemed to darken and grow.
As he walked toward her, Mary turned and threw herself into his arms, half screaming, half shouting out gibberish.
“What, please, Mary, what?” Tommy begged.
“Oh, God! Oh, God, oh God!” Frank breathed at his side, pointing.
The stray cloud covering the moon had moved on. And they could all see.
There was rigging between two tombs, ropes that stretched from one small family tomb to another.
They were tied to…
A corpse. One that was barely real…bones, bits of flesh, pieces of cloth, and a skull with hair and ravaged pieces of cheeks and lips still attached. Hayley stared, stunned.
Tommy Hilliard, tough Tommy Hilliard, let out a scream that might have wakened the dead.
Then they all turned to run; Tommy was so rattled he pushed away from Mary who had been leaning on him. Mary fell, Frank leaped over her.
Marcy still gaped; Hayley came to and rushed for the fallen Mary, along with Art, who had also retained some of his senses. But even as they helped Mary to her feet, Hayley could hear laughter—high-pitched, delighted feminine laughter.
She stood still.
Tiffany Myers, unable to control her amusement, walked out from behind one of the tombs from where the body had been hung. She tossed her long, blonde hair over her shoulder as she appeared, followed by Bobby McGill, who dressed as the “wolf” mascot for their high school games.
Bobby was a sweet guy, but always on the periphery. He hadn’t made the team; he was a little bit pudgy and had never managed to clear up his acne.
And normally, Hayley thought, Tiffany wouldn’t have given him the time of day.
“You, oh, my God! You, Tommy Hilliard! That was hysterical. All of you! Big, brave kids—going to spend the night in the cemetery. Wow. Thankfully, I have this all recorded on my phone. Oh, my God! It’s going to be so wonderful!” She started to laugh again, and she turned and stared at Marcy, “Wow, honey, I guess your cemetery party is really—dead! You forgot to invite me but, hey, not to worry—I wouldn’t really want to be in here with this group of silly cowards. Oh, lord, Marcy, you should have seen yourself. Some grave-digger’s daughter you are.”
“People are interred here, Tiffany. My dad has never dug a grave.”
“Whatever. Oh, my God, that was too good. Bobby, come along now. You were a big help, but I have other things I need to do, other people to see…oh, that was too, too, funny!”
Shrieking with laughter, she started down the path that led to the main gates, followed by Bobby McGill.
Tommy started to go after her; Marcy caught his arm.
“Tommy—”
“Marcy, not to worry. That was sick; she’s had it with me. Maybe we will all go into the house for the night. But I want her phone.” He turned suddenly, wincing. “Mary, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to knock you down. I really did freak.” He stared at the corpse. “And it’s just a leftover Halloween decoration. I don’t know why I didn’t see that!”
“Guys,” Hayley said. “I’ll go after her. I’m not—well, you know. I’m not local anymore—I mean, I’m not in school with you guys. I’ll see if I can reason with her before she gets out. If I need to, I’ll threaten that I’m going to call Officer Claymore, or…I don’t know. Let me try.”
She hoped they listened to her—if Tommy accosted Tiffany, it might get nasty. Tiffany was in a mood.
Tommy was a big guy.
Hayley didn’t want anyone getting hurt.
She heard footsteps behind her and swung around. It was Art.
“Hey, Hayley, I’m not going to speak, just follow, make sure you’re alright, okay?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Hayley had followed a path that led straight to the main gates. But she’d been wrong, apparently. Tiffany didn’t seem to be along the path anywhere. Hayley turned back to Art.
Art shook his head. “She really thinks she can do anything to anyone. I keep hoping that graduation will make a change—get Tommy away from her. Tommy is really okay, you know?”
“I, um, I guess,” Hayley told him. “I’m not in school, but…I mean, anyway—we need to find Tiffany. Right now, I want to deal with her and not Tommy.”
“You know the place, right? Which way?” Art asked.
She hesitated. “She could have cut across to the entrance on Lafitte Court. There’s no street that way, just an alley and then the back of some houses. But if her car is on the road—”
“She would just have to walk down the alley to reach it. Of course, she could crawl over the wall in some places,” he said, pausing to grimace, “but she might break a nail.”
Hayley smiled. “We can cut through here.”
Barclay Cemetery was, from the air, laid out in a cross. There were two main paths through it—one with the center tomb being the Barclay tomb, and the one that crossed. Hayley led Art in a zigzag to reach that center path down from where Marcy and the others waited.
She didn’t want to report failure yet.
The moon was riding high again. Hayley had known the cemetery forever, but she still noted, by the moonlight, the beauty of the tombs, built more like a Colonial or Victorian house than homes for the remains of the dead. Most of the vaults or mausoleums were clean and painted; on some, the owners were far away and long gone from the area. Hayley’s uncle tried to keep up with them, but the space was large, and while there was only an occasional burial now and then, it was an active cemetery, and he tended to be a busy man.
Here and there, the tombs were covered with the darkness of age. Every now and then, a rusty old gate swung open on its hinges; weeds grew up around the tombs, and the atmosphere of death and decaying elegance was heavy. And still…
“She’s done it again,” Art said, shaking his head. “Bitch! She knew we’d come after her. Well, hell, I’m not screaming or staring like a fool again!”
Hayley stopped in her tracks. He was looking toward the gate. Between the last family tombs in the row, connecting ropes were stretched out again. Gargoyles, crosses, any piece of funerary art had been used for the anchors.
A body hung between them.
This one fresh.
“Oh, God—no, no! She’s fooling around,” Art said.
Hayley didn’t think she was. Compelled, she moved forward, and as she did, a horrified scream froze in her throat.
It was Tiffany…the body was Tiffany. Her eyes were still open, but it seemed a river of blood poured from her throat and down her shirt and her jeans…still dripping to the ground. She was strung out with arms and legs fastened to the ropes, like a creature caught in a spider’s web…
A creature with a gaping wound at the throat, so deep it almost severed her head from her body.
Hayley had the sense to shove her hand into her jeans for her cell phone.
“Oh, God! It’s real this time!” Art breathed. “There, oh God, there…on the ground. There—it’s Bobby McGill…on the ground, but not strung up yet, and…”
“We have to get him; he may not be dead.”
“Oh, my God, oh, my God—”
“Stop!”
She wasn’t sure if it was an instinct or something she had seen in a movie, but Hayley slapped him hard in the face, shoving her phone at him. “Dial 911 and get the others out! 911, now, and be coherent!”
“They won’t believe—”
“When they hear the sirens, they will.”
“He’s still in here. Whoever did this, he’s still in here!” Art whimpered.
“Go!” she snapped, and she hit him again. “Dial.”
The second hit did it. Art dialed 911 as he walked, and then ran, away. Hayley barely noticed; she was staring ahead, but Bobby seemed to be alone on the ground.
Of course, shadows were everywhere.
It was after midnight in the Barclay Cemetery.
She reached Bobby. There was no blood on him; he just lay there, as if he had been hit.
“Bobby! Bobby!” she whispered fervently.
His eyes opened. He stared; then he screamed.
“Bobby, stop! He—whoever—they’ll hear!”
“Dead, dead, dead, Tiffany…he slammed me on the head, he wrenched her away. I saw it while I was falling, oh, I saw it, saw him rip up her throat, oh, God, oh, God—”
“Bobby, get up. We need to get out of here. The cops will be here soon, but we must get out now, okay, come on, come on!”
“Out to your cousin’s house, can’t go that way!” Bobby said, indicating the closest exit. “I think he went that way, came in that way…has his stuff, his rope, whatever, that way. Oh, God, Tiffany!”
“Come on, Bobby, come on!”
Half-leading him, half-carrying him, Hayley got him to move. She headed straight down a path at first, moving fast.
But she sensed something, someone behind her.
She angled in among the tombs, taking a winding path, barely aware of the funerary art now—the angels and saints, guardian dogs, flower urns, and gargoyles.
Bobby started to trip in a nest of weeds; she straightened him and realized they were coming up on the Judith McCafferty family vault and she prayed silently the killer had not come upon the lowly veteran seeking shelter there.
She paused, gasping, leaning against the enclosure there for a minute. Bobby was heavy; he was trying to move, he was just staggering, probably from the knock on his head. She could see blood on him now; a thin trickle that fell from a big knot on his temple.
Bushes were rustling near them.
The killer, she thought, had discovered Bobby gone.
And he was coming.
She eased out carefully, and then she froze. He was there. Right there in front of her, just feet away from the plaque that honored Judith McCafferty.
She didn’t know what she had expected. A human being, yes, but one with jagged teeth and drool sliding from his lips. Ugly and frightening in appearance…
He wasn’t ugly; he was just a man. Maybe six-feet-even, with brown hair now slightly askew over his forehead, light eyes, and an easy smile that seemed especially heinous as he was dotted in blood. His shirt was flannel; he wore jeans. He was perhaps twenty-something, maybe thirty…and, without the blood, he might have been appealing, charming even…someone Tiffany wouldn’t have hesitated to speak with.
He carried a huge knife. The moonlight caught upon it, but it didn’t shimmer.
It was covered in Tiffany’s blood.
“Well, hello there,” he said softly. “So, you’re the one who stole chubby-boy from me while I was setting up my trap. Well, that means some really special care for you.”
Bobby slumped in her arms.
She wasn’t sure if it was his injury, or if he’d just passed out cold.
She stared at the man, the killer in her midst, torn.
Her desire to live was almost overwhelming. And yet somewhere inside she knew if she left Bobby to die, she might not ever be able to really live again.
“Hi there, yourself,” she managed. “Sorry I stole fat boy. But, hey, not to worry—the cops are on their way. You might want some more fun, but you don’t have time for any more fun. You need to run—now!”
“Leave this lovely cemetery?” he asked her. Then he laughed. “You really think any of your idiot friends managed to call the cops?”
“Yes,” she said. “Now, I can see where you doubt that, but…really. You need to run.”
He smiled. A deep, deep, self-pleased smile, and he took a step toward her. She backed against the wall of the tomb, unable to hold Bobby. She needed to run, run fast, but…
“Oh, I am going to have so much fun—”
He broke off abruptly. He just stood there; Hayley had heard something, but she didn’t know what. Something, a strange sound, as if…
As if he had been the one struck on the head.
She stared at him, barely daring to blink. He suddenly fell forward, and in his place, she saw the shaggy homeless veteran she had spoken with earlier.
“Go! Grab your friend and go,” he told her. “I don’t know how long he’ll be out.”
“Thank you! Oh, thank you—”
“Go!”
She nodded and reached down for Bobby, determined she was going to get him to go on a diet. She slapped him—she was getting good at slapping—and he groggily came to.
“We have to go.”
He nodded.
He got to his feet. And with him, Hayley ran the best she could. But as she reached the center of the “crossroad” in the cemetery and saw the gate to Marcy’s backyard not far ahead, she heard sirens screeching through the air.
Art had managed to dial 911. Help was coming.
And even as she dragged Bobby forward, Tommy and Frank came running out of the yard, taking him from her, yelling that they needed to get in, lock the gate, lock the doors!
They did so, locking the back door just as the first police car ripped into the front yard.
* * *
It turned out their haste at that point hadn’t mattered. The police had found their serial killer, Matthew Marin, back at the McCafferty vault, right where he had fallen.
He had been alone.
Hayley wanted to know where her homeless friend had gone. She explained over, and over again that he’d saved her and Bobby by cracking the killer over the head with something.
A piece of a broken gargoyle, fallen from the arch over the McCafferty vault.
There was no sign of anyone else in the cemetery. Police combed the place—there was no homeless man.
She insisted that there had been. But they were all exhausted and reeling. Parents were on the way; the police had finished with the questioning; the medical examiner had to come, which somehow seemed like an oxymoron to Hayley—coming to a cemetery to do a preliminary examination on a corpse.
The corpse was Tiffany. No, they hadn’t been friends. It was still tragic. Everyone had someone who loved them and the murder was horrible.
Marcy seemed to remain in shock. Hayley put blankets around her; she made her hot tea. Mary was oddly calmer now; the worst had passed.
The boys were quiet and thoughtful. She knew Tommy felt as if he had been a failure; he was ashamed of himself. They tried to assure him the shock of the situation had gotten to all of them.
Detectives were on the case, of course, but as time wore on, it was Officer Claymore who stayed with all of them, almost like a mother hen, watching them, helping with anything—coffee, water, tea, pillows, whatever.
“Water,” Hayley told Claymore at one point. “The man in the cemetery—I gave him a bottle of water.”
“We did find an empty water bottle,” Claymore told her, but he still looked at her sadly.
“A real person drank it,” she said.
“Maybe one of your friends, maybe Tiffany before…”
“Why can’t you believe me? I wish I’d had the courage to stand up against such a monster, but I’m telling you—”
“Maybe there was a man who saved you. Maybe, in all the trauma, you don’t know what really happened; Hayley, it doesn’t matter. You couldn’t have saved Tiffany; others are alive, you’re alive!”
She knew that. She should just be grateful.
But she wanted to be grateful to the stranger.
Claymore stayed with Hayley and she sat with him while she waited; her father was on the way. He’d be taking her and Marcy with him back to New Orleans.
New Orleans would be fine now. The City Slicer had come here. He had been taken away with a serious head injury; he might or might not live. Whether he did or didn’t, he’d be safely locked away.
Claymore looked at her, smiling gently. “You’re a st
rong one, Hayley.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m not trying to be a pest, but I wish they could find him. I know that everyone questions me on whether he was real or not. I know that he was. Whoever he is, he saved our lives.”
“Hayley, I’m afraid if he was there, he’s disappeared.”
“Well, I wish he hadn’t disappeared,” Hayley said.
“Are you absolutely sure you didn’t throw that piece of gargoyle sculpture yourself?”
No, she hadn’t. Or had she? Was she losing her mind?
No. She’d seen him, as clear as day. Even by moonlight. He’d been real; her savior had been real. He had spoken to her. She’d left him her bottle of water.
“He’s gone now,” Claymore said. He offered her a grimace. “Hey. Maybe you were saved by the ghost of Ethan Fray. Anyway, I thank God that with that madman loose here we only lost one; it could have been so much worse.”
Hayley just gave him a weak smile. It was still sad; so tragic. Tiffany had been a jerk, but no one deserved what had happened to her.
And still, Claymore was right. It might have been so much worse.
She knew she was grateful to be alive. And eternally grateful to the man—living or dead—who had helped her.
She saw her father’s car pulling into the front yard; saw his face—the love, the fear, and the concern.
She ran to be taken into his arms.
She knew only one thing.
Never again. She would never, ever be in that cemetery again after midnight.
Because she knew now that, curse or no, nothing good happened there after midnight.
No, nothing good happened after midnight. Even in a garden of death.
* * *
THE SIXTH DECOY
An Aristotle “Soc” Socarides
Short Story
PAUL KEMPRECOS
Elmer Crowell had a sharp eye and a sharper blade. He could take a block of wood and cut away everything that didn’t look like a bird, creating a masterpiece that looked as if it could quack, waddle or take flight. Some people say he was the best bird carver in the world.
Ol’ Elmer was an authentic American genius, no doubt about it. He was also a humble man from what I’ve heard. He would have dropped his whittling knife if someone told him the carvings he turned out in his ramshackle shed would bring millions of dollars at auction. And his gentle soul would have been burdened if he knew the desire to possess the things of beauty that sprang from his mind and his hands could lead to bloodshed.